Holiday releases get me every time. Not only do I love a well-packaged and curated set of anything, the beauty bundles like the Buxom 6 Degrees Below Sexy (available at Ulta and Sephora) are an extremely appealing and easy to validate way to try out a brand or variety of products for less money. For example, in Buxom’s set, you can try six of Buxom Full-On Lip Polishes for only $32, whereas the full-sized version of the six individual colors would cost $120.
Buxom 6 Degrees Below Sexy Lip Gloss: Review
Ulta sent me the limited edition Buxom 6 Degrees Below Sexy a few weeks ago. As someone who is generally fearful of lip gloss, I was eager to see if my fears were warranted. I’ve never tried Buxom’s lip glosses but I’ve heard their eyeshadows are incredible. These glosses are well-reviewed, and claim to have lip-plumping effects.
The six mini-sizes of Buxom’s Full-On Lip Polishes included in this set are (2 rows, from left to right):
- Dominique (glittering ice)
- Amy (golden nude shimmer)
- Celeste (prismatic soft peach shimmer)
- Clair (starry plum haze shimmer)
- Starr (brandy cordial shimmer)
- Jasmine (high shine black cherry)
Colors
Each shade is visibly different in color, and each has varying shapes, colors, and sizes of glitter for maximum reflection. The lower three are darker colored and buildable. Everything was above average in quality, and all but one had nice and even pigmentation. You could wear a slight tint resulting from one application or really layer it on for a more striking, glossy lip. These look incredible over other lip colors, too.
All of the shades in the set are pretty, but the three darkest were very berry-toned and felt a little bit indistinguishable. The glitter and sheen helped each shade stand out. The least impressive shade was Dominique because, in addition to a lack of pigmentation, the glitter didn’t particularly stand out. It seemed more like a basic clear gloss that occasionally reflects in the light than an icy, glittery gloss. I also wasn’t blown away by Jasmine, the dark cherry color. It’s a beautiful sheer berry color, but it settles into the lines on my lips and makes me look like a witch who loves popsicles.
My favorite of the bunch was easily Amy. The concentration of fine, golden glitter and the way it was dispersed evenly throughout the gloss made it totally fun to wear both by itself and overtop other shades.
Formula
This is where I’m usually afraid of lip gloss. I hate sticky, and I have long, curly hair that does what it wants. And when I’m wearing lip gloss, my hair wants to be on it. While this gloss isn’t some miracle gloss that doesn’t adhere to dry hair, it isn’t particularly sticky or goopy. It doesn’t create that stringy zombie-mouth effect that other pigmented glosses do. The gloss is smooth and adheres well to your lips, so you don’t end up eating a bunch of it as soon as you push your lips together.
As far as being a “lip plumping gloss” – negligible. I sort of felt like my lips were fuller, but it could have been because they had sparkly gloss all over them. Either way, they definitely make your lips tingle with a menthol feeling. They don’t smell like mint or menthol, though, they smell like delicious vanilla cream that I really have to try not to eat.
Buxom is the sexy alter-ego of Bare Escentuals, which is a company known for packing healthy skin ingredients into their makeup. Buxom is no different. These lip polishes contain age-fighting Vitamin A and peptides to help keep that pouty-pout as poofy as it can be for as long as possible.
Packaging, Price & Value
The packaging is really cute, although it’s also really hard to wrap as a gift. The box is covered in glittery silver cardboard, and I did not experience any glitter fall-out from the box. Inside the elongated octagonal box is a clear plastic insert that holds the six lip glosses. I think the packaging is really cute and stands out among other holiday sets. The box has the name of the product on the front, and that’s it. Very simple and gorgeous!
The mini lip glosses come in small plastic tubes with doe foot applicators. They look like identical to their full-sized counterparts, just squished down to a miniature size. The mini glosses are only 0.07 oz. each, as opposed to the full size which contains .15 oz. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to get 50% less product for only 25% of the price of the full sized. That is a straight-up good value.
Buxom 6 Degrees Below Sexy: Full-On Lip Polish Swatches
These swatches were all done in natural daylight with one layer of lip gloss applied before the photos were taken. They were done consecutively over about an hour with concealer reapplied around my mouth and slightly over my lips between each application.
Dominique
This is the gloss that I really wanted to like but was ultimately underwhelmed by. It’s a clear gloss with icy, silver micro-glitter, but it doesn’t translate well over bare lips. Dominique doesn’t have as much shine to it due to it being the only shade in the Full-On Lip Polish collection with a “glitter finish.” That being said, it’s still transformative. It would be lovely over pretty much any shade for a nice shine and occasional shimmer!
Amy
Amy is one of my favorites, for sure. Especially coming after Dominique, the explosion of golden shimmer is so exciting that I ended up wearing it for the rest of the day. The color is so faint that it can barely be detected, but the layer of pale gold glean is absolutely gorgeous over literally every shade of lipstick. Out of all of the shades in Buxom 6 Degrees Below Sexy, Amy was the one I most enjoyed wearing over bare lips.
Celeste
Celeste is a nice pinky-purple shade that’s full of sparkly bits. As far as daily-wearable glitter goes, it doesn’t get much better than this. It’s more tinted than the first two, but it’s still really sheer. While the holographic glitter stands out beautifully, the color by itself is a YLBB (your lips but better) kind of shade. This gloss is described by Buxom as “prismatic soft peach” and I would agree, though it’s very much on the pink side of peach as opposed to the orange-yellow side. The shimmer, however, is one of the strongest in this set. Blue, green, lavender, red, and pink can all be seen under direct light, and sporadically throughout the day. It’s truly beautiful, and the color and shimmer work together magically well.
Clair
Clair, like Celeste, was a good performer as a sparkly gloss. “Starry plum haze” is a pretty whimsical description, but I would agree with it, for the most part. This is a deep berry color with warm pink and bronze-gold shimmer that jumps out of the shade and really warms up the gloss. For a while, this was my favorite gloss of the bunch because the shimmer was more gentle than Starr’s (which has a similar color combination), but is plentiful. You can faintly detect red and bronze sparkles every once in a while, and it really adds a warm, sunny beam quality to the plum color.
Starr
Now we’re getting into the deeper colors. Starr is a merlot red-purple gloss with bold purple and bronze glitter that looks incredibly beautiful against the deep, warm grape color of the gloss. Ugh, so pretty! I had to apply a little bit more of this gloss compared to the others in order to get a satisfying, even look. In the right light, you can see the gold, purple, and green reflects, but it doesn’t translate as well on my lips without a good amount of gloss.
Jasmine
The darkest color of them all proves to be the second most disappointing item in the collection of six. As soon as it touched my lips, it headed straight for my fine lines. On top of that, I couldn’t really do anything to prevent the streakiness. It even happened when I applied it over a lip liner. In the tube, this is an incredibly beautiful, vampy, berry purple with red shimmer with flecks of purple. That beautiful color sadly never really shows up. You can see a couple of red flecks here and there, but this streaky berry shade is the aggressive star of the show.
That’s it! All Six Degrees Below Sexy in their sparkly, glittery glory.
Do you have a favorite shade? Or a particular combination of gloss color and glitter? Almost all of them are worth trying (except those bitches, Dominique and Jasmine) and I will definitely continue to play with these over other lipsticks.
Where to get Buxom 6 Degrees Below Sexy
Sephora: $32 ($5.95+ $ shipping)
(Try code YOURGIFT after signing into your account to receive a free deluxe sample with $25+)
Ulta: $32 (+ 5.95 shipping)
(Try code 403313 for $5 off $15 or more
Amazon: $52.95 (+ Free shipping)
(Don’t buy this. Don’t be ridiculous, this price is outrageous.)
*Sephora ships way faster than Ulta – their standard shipping is 3 days, my orders from Ulta take 5-9 days. Just saying.
My eyeshadow has been asked about ever since I posted a teaser pic on Instagram a while ago. It’s a shadow called Jingwei by Innocent + Twisted Alchemy, an indie company that I also talked about in the How To Press Loose Eyeshadows post. They are one of my favorite indie brands! I used Jingwei all over the lid, then right at the base over Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy. The liner is a gel liner, DTLA by Colourpop, applied with a fine-tipped eyebrow brush.
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